When physicist Wen Ho Lee first denied leaking U.S. nuclear secrets to the Chinese, authorities from the Department of Energy in 1998 wired him to a polygraph to see if he was lying. The Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist passed. But when a polygraph expert from the FBI looked at the same test results later, he concluded that Lee had not told the truth. How could the same lie detector test lead investigators to exactly opposite conclusions? The case of Lee, who eventually pleaded guilty to one felony count of mishandling classified information, has left law enforcement experts trying to answer the same fundamental questions that have existed since the invention of the lie detector 80 years ago: Does the polygraph actually work?

I don't agree with what Karl Rove, a Republican strategist, said about Hillary Clinton ("Anatomy of a smear," May 15). But what the Democrats did to Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney was just as bad. (The suggestion that Mr. Romney single-handedly caused a women who worked for him to die of cancer is one example.) How about some equal opportunity editorializing on the lying by the current administration about the Affordable Care Act, Benghazi, "Fast and Furious," the IRS scandal, etc.?

The Navy's espionage case against former NSA cryptologist Daniel King, who is alleged to be a spy, has turned what is usually a three-day pretrial hearing into a monthlong ordeal largely because of a series of government missteps. King, a decorated Navy petty officer 1st class, was arrested last October after, Naval officials said, he failed a routine lie detector test and confessed to sending a computer disk to the Russian Embassy. He has been held at the military brig at Quantico, Va. The hearing at Quantico was delayed yesterday for the third time.

The head of security at the Baltimore jail failed a polygraph test administered after a federal indictment alleged widespread corruption on her watch, corrections secretary Gary D. Maynard told lawmakers at a hearing in Annapolis. Shavella Miles is the only person to have been removed following the allegations, but an internal inquiry has progressed down the ranks with all jail employees subject to review. Maynard said Thursday that the supervisors of 13 corrections officers charged in the federal case are under investigation.

NEW YORK -- Faced with growing skepticism about his decision to publicize a now-discredited subway threat, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg tried to quiet his critics yesterday with nuggets of evidence that had troubled him last week. Bloomberg said his decision to publicize the threat was based on details from a source who provided information about a potential attack. That source's information has since come under attack. "The person that made the allegation passed his lie detector test and when an operation was mounted in Iraq to grab the other three, as they grabbed them, one of them screamed: `You're too late to stop us!

An Anne Arundel Circuit judge ruled yesterday that a statement to a polygraph expert by a teacher charged with leaving a blind, handicapped student in a storage closet last winter cannot be used by prosecutors because it was coerced.Judge H. Chester Goudy ruled that Susan Hope Pagano's statement to Lloyd White, a state-appointed polygraph expert, that she "felt guilty about what happened" was made after a promise that Ms. Pagano would not be charged if she passed the lie detector test.Ms.

The attorney for Zeke Mowatt of the New England Patriots says a lie-detector test proved his client is innocent of sexually harassing a Boston Herald sportswriter.But the reporter, Lisa Olson, said in a statement yesterday that she is sticking by her story and is also willing to take a lie detector test.Mowatt took the test in Miami on Monday, The Boston Globe reported. The 5 1/2 -hour test was administered by polygraph expert George Slattery Sr."This exonerates Zeke and shows just how poorly this entire episode was handled," attorney Robert Fraley of Orlando, Fla., said Friday.

As Carroll County's newly elected state's attorney, Jerry F. Barnes has the opportunity to change a number of long-standing practices of the prosecutor's office. Beginning the selective use of polygraph tests on rape victims, however, should not be among those changes.Even if lie detector use would be a "one-in-a-thousand kind of thing," as Mr. Barnes said, testing rape victims demeans them and sends the wrong message to the community. We can't fathom the motives of Mr. Barnes, who this fall unseated the county's prosecutor of 20 years, Thomas E. Hickman.

DEMOCRATS ORDINARILY would be thrilled with the candidacy of a police chief for high office. Who better than a respected, professional law-and-order type to balance the party's liberal persona? But the possibility that Howard County Police Chief James N. Robey may run for county executive as a Democrat doesn't exactly have party leaders doing cartwheels.The image of Howard's 300-officer force has largely been positive under the chief's leadership, but he also has overseen two big blunders that have left him as vulnerable as an officer with a slingshot in a shootout.

From time to time, I discover a computer product that breaks the "gee whiz" barrier. Truster shatters it with room to spare.This software converts a computer into a lie detector. But unlike a polygraph that requires the subject to be strapped in and wired up, Truster detects falsehoods from the sound of the spoken word using "voice stress recognition," and it is used by law enforcement agencies around the world.As a person speaks, the vocal cords vibrate at a specific frequency. When a person lies, the amount of blood in the cords drops.

By Jennifer McMenamin and Jennifer McMenamin,jennifer.mcmenamin@baltsun.com | November 1, 2008

For almost three years, Trent L. Banks has insisted to police, prosecutors and judges that he did not shoot at his girlfriend in March 2006 after she slashed his car tires over his infidelity. Yesterday, a Baltimore County judge who granted Banks the unusual opportunity to take a lie-detector test to prove his innocence shared the results with him. They were not good. The report, Circuit Judge Lawrence R. Daniels said in court, indicated that Banks "showed deception" in answering questions about the attempted murder of his then-girlfriend as she drove from an apartment complex in the Parkville area.

NEW YORK -- Faced with growing skepticism about his decision to publicize a now-discredited subway threat, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg tried to quiet his critics yesterday with nuggets of evidence that had troubled him last week. Bloomberg said his decision to publicize the threat was based on details from a source who provided information about a potential attack. That source's information has since come under attack. "The person that made the allegation passed his lie detector test and when an operation was mounted in Iraq to grab the other three, as they grabbed them, one of them screamed: `You're too late to stop us!

PHILADELPHIA - The last refuge of secrets and lies - the brain - may be about to reveal all. Scientists are finding ways to use the brain's activity to expose truths a person may try to hide. The techniques could revolutionize police work, improve national security, and threaten personal privacy. "It's the scariest thing around," said physicist Robert Park, an outspoken critic of old-fashioned, unreliable polygraph machines. "The only thing worse than a lie detector that doesn't work is one that does."

MY FELLOW mothers and I have been bargaining for the truth lately. But our kids aren't keeping their end of those bargains. My fellow mothers and I promise that we will not tell the father or the other child's mother, in exchange for the truth. We promise that we will not punish, in exchange for the truth. We promise that we will not go ballistic, in exchange for the truth. And still, our kids are lying to us. How do we know? Because our kids are so bad at lying. That's surprising, considering how much of it they do. Their lies are often improbable, and they are usually told without eye contact.

The FBI will soon begin giving polygraph exams to scores of employees at the Army's bio- defense center at Fort Detrick in Frederick and at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah to see if a government insider mailed the anthrax that killed five people last fall, an FBI official confirmed last night. In the course of the eight-month investigation, lie- detector tests have been given to a small number of scientists who had access to anthrax, including about 10 people at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick.

DETROIT - The FBI tried during the weekend to persuade Charles "Chuckie" O'Brien to take a lie-detector test regarding the disappearance of former Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa, according to a letter that O'Brien's lawyer said came from an agent. William Bufalino II said O'Brien received the letter Sunday from agent Andrew Sluss, who also wrote to O'Brien five years ago and said he didn't consider him a suspect in the case. The new letter suggests O'Brien could clear his name if he can pass an FBI polygraph test.

I don't agree with what Karl Rove, a Republican strategist, said about Hillary Clinton ("Anatomy of a smear," May 15). But what the Democrats did to Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney was just as bad. (The suggestion that Mr. Romney single-handedly caused a women who worked for him to die of cancer is one example.) How about some equal opportunity editorializing on the lying by the current administration about the Affordable Care Act, Benghazi, "Fast and Furious," the IRS scandal, etc.?

Times are tough for fake soldiers. Latest casualty: Distinguished historian Joseph J. Ellis, exposed as a phony Vietnam veteran, besmirching an otherwise brilliant career as an author and professor. Other notables among the recently fallen: a Pennsylvania schools superintendent who claimed to have been a decorated Navy SEAL; a retired police chief in Ohio who told stories of Green Beret heroism and brutal captivity as a prisoner of the Viet Cong; a leader of Wal-Mart's executive security detail who claimed to have been not only a SEAL but also a master killer, supposedly dispatching one of his 16 victims with a rolled-up newspaper; a major league baseball manager who told his players hair-raising tales of Marine missions in Vietnam.

When physicist Wen Ho Lee first denied leaking U.S. nuclear secrets to the Chinese, authorities from the Department of Energy in 1998 wired him to a polygraph to see if he was lying. The Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist passed. But when a polygraph expert from the FBI looked at the same test results later, he concluded that Lee had not told the truth. How could the same lie detector test lead investigators to exactly opposite conclusions? The case of Lee, who eventually pleaded guilty to one felony count of mishandling classified information, has left law enforcement experts trying to answer the same fundamental questions that have existed since the invention of the lie detector 80 years ago: Does the polygraph actually work?